From Bella Coola to Smithers

It's been 3 weeks on the West side of Canada. Our next destination is Barkerville, a replica of an old small mining town. We decide to stop and sleep in a campsite near Quesnel to spend the night since we have been driving from Bella Coola and we are exhausted. We meet two bikers, a Serbian and a Norwegian. They have been driving for at least a month together and are heading down south. We share a few stories and beers around a good campfire for a few hours. Great time and our first campfire since we started. They advise us to buy a hatchet for our future fires (we did a few days later and it's been worth it so far!).A little bit tired in the morning, we leave a bit later than planned to Barkerville.

It's a really nice stop for a few hours and quite interesting. The people working here are role-playing the inhabitants from a 100 years ago. From the school teacher to the merchants. They even have a courthouse act. Just make sure you check the schedule before going so you don't miss out. There is also a theater that we didn't have time to check out.

We are heading towards Prince Rupert on the coast and make a few stops on the way. The first one in a free campsite next to a lake where we do our first campfire! The second one in Prince George on a rainy day where we pay a visit to their rainy "Summer Festival" and do a short trail with some carved sculpture on the trees.

We spend our second night next to Fraser Lake in another free campsite. Lovely spot even with the railway 100 meters away. This brings us to our next and most memorable stop, Smithers and the Babine Mountains. The initial plan is to spend the night in Smithers and go hiking the next day in the Babine mountains. However, after a quick stop at visitor center, we decide to go backcountry camping for 3 days - 2 nights. 8km the first day (starting at 6pm) with a night in the tent, 25km the second day spending our second night in a cabin and 8-10km the last day. We know the second day might be tough but we will manage.

We are all set at 6pm and start hiking up to the first campsite. It's not buggy and the trail is pretty nice with lots of nice landscapes. We arrive at the campsite around 9pm. That's basically a flat spot down the hill surrounding by mountains with a pit toilet which is a wood box hidden behind a couple of trees!.. BEST TOILETS EVER!!! The spot is neat apart for a swarm of reddish mosquitoes.. We setup the tent, pull the food bag up the tree for bear safety. Petra jumps straight into the tent while I decide to check for mountain goats with the binoculars. I spot 4 of them quite far away but that's enough wildlife to make me happy and go to sleep.

We wake up the next morning early, pack up our gear and start hiking again. No way we are going to have breakfast in this spot with all those mosquitoes. We find a nice spot with a better view and less buggy half an hour after the start and decide to have our amazing breakfast. The morning is beautiful and the view spectacular. The trail brings us on the side of the mountain with a view on two alpine lakes. About an hour later, we encounter a creek splitting in 4 smaller creeks. The red ribbons are marked on both sides but there are no proper path to cross. After more than 30min going up an down the creek looking for it, we decide to create our own. Walking through the high grass and moving rocks on the creek so we can cross them without falling in the water. Once crossed, the path follows the side of the mountain and passes the two lakes. We are running out of water and decide to use our filter pump for the first time before continuing up hill to eagle pass.

It's steep and it takes us about an hour to reach the top to a view of the other side. We discover some remains of a Silver mine on our way down. From that, point we are supposed to follow the old mine road down to the next trail. The start is pretty easy to follow until the old wood cabins that were probably used by the miners. It's a little creepy but quite cool at the same time. That would be a great spot for lunch but it's infested with mosquitoes and the rain starts pouring on us.

The rain is expected and it will probably rain for a few hours so we gear up with the waterproof clothes and the cover for the backpacks and keep going.

The old road is boggy, it's hard to know where to step to not get wet and after about a kilometer, the road starts to disappear within the forest. The trail is not maintained and we didn't know. We can still guess where the road is since the vegetation that have been growing on it is quite young and about 2-3 meters tall. We start going through it, hoping it's not going to be this way for too long... Unfortunately, it's the same thing until the end of this trail. After 2-3 hours of "jungle", dead trees, landslides and an old bridge, we arrive at another creek.

There is no bridge, it is running fast and it's 20-30cm of water. The first thought is: do we go back? No way, we know what's behind us and don't want to go through it again. I'm already soaking wet because of the rain and my "water resistant" pants are more like a dry fast pants. The water already went down to my Gore-Tex hiking shoes. However, Petra is still fine so we don't really want to cross the stream by foot. There are a few trunks down across the river. We manage to find a couple of them strong enough to walk on one while holding the other but it doesn't bring us to the path but 10m away from it in the actual "jungle". We fight our way out for 10-20 minutes to finally reach the end of the trail! We should have 10km left once we find the next trailhead. We find it 2 minutes later, and it looks exactly the same as the previous one... Not maintained, boggy jungle...

We meet two other hikers 20 minutes into the trail. They are basically doing the same as us the other way around.. They tell us we have two more hours of jungle before reaching a slightly better road. They also tell us it's going to be really hard/impossible to reach the cabin. It's 4pm and there is still a long way to go. We still didn't have lunch and there is no good spots to stop yet. We basically feed on almonds and bars.

We keep going, determined to sleep in this cabin and enjoy a good fire. We have the current trail (Cronin Creek Trail) and Highland Pass to go through before reaching it. We reach the top of the mountain at 8pm to a beautiful view of the north. There is no roads, no cities, only forest and hills / mountains. We can see the Highland Pass but we are still far away. An hour later, we are at the top of the path, exhausted, hungry, but still no sign of the cabin... A short break to enjoy the view and we start our way down. We are thinking to sleep in the tent as it's 9pm and we still can't see the cabin.

There is a spot about 20 minutes away from the top that would give us a view of the valley. If there is still no sign of the cabin, we will camp there. We arrive at the spot, check down, and TADA! The cabin. What a relief, it's still around 2 kilometers away but we can do it. The cabin is more like a chalet. Big enough to accommodate 15 to 20 people. There is a retired couple and their grand children already in their room. We start the fire, warm ourselves up and finally cook something to eat! We did 35km today (miscalculated the distance by 10km...) and we are exhausted but happy to spend the night in a warm place where we can dry out clothes.

We wake up the next morning and prepare breakfast while talking to the family who slept at the cabin. We have to leave around 10am as we have our next workaway in Prince Rupert and we are supposed to arrive before the evening. Only 8km left but our legs are hurting...

We will remember this adventure forever. Looking back at it now, it's a good memory and a good story to tell. At least, we learned to always check the trail conditions before starting a hike (when available) :).